An overview of Michael Cherney’s artistic process and recent works. The art combines photography with the subject matter, aesthetics, materials and formats traditionally associated with classical Chinese painting, which allows for viewing the present day environment and landscape in China through the lens of art history. In addition to the presentation, the artist will guide the audience through viewing several handscrolls, albums and other works

“One would be hard-pressed to find a ‘more Chinese’ artist than Qiu Mai (Michael Cherney). Photographer, calligrapher, and book artist, Qiu Mai’s work is done with the great sophistication that draws on the subtleties of China’s most scholarly and esoteric traditions. Based in Beijing and a successful artist whose works have been collected by The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Asian Art (the first photographic works ever to enter the collection of that department), Qiu Mai’s art is less provocative than it is intellectually engaging, meditative, and often simply beautiful.  What is provocative is his identity:  Qiu Mai is the Chinese name for Michael Cherney, born in New York of Jewish parentage. Cherney’s work is the cutting-edge demonstration of artistic globalization:  if Asian artists can so readily ‘come West,’ then what is to prevent large numbers of future Western artists from ‘going Asian’? Or, like Qiu Mai/Michael Cherney, going both ways at once, both American and Chinese, modern and traditional.”
– Jerome Silbergeld, P. Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Professor of Chinese Art History, Princeton University

Co-sponsored by the Harvard-China Project